How I Like Spoon: The Playlist

I didn’t plan on putting this playlist up on Valentine’s Day. Spoon’s fine new album Lucifer On The Sofa arrived Friday, and the ensuing discussion made me realize the potential for a good mix of what came before. But it’s a fitting holiday for the band, as no indie act more signifies eligible bachelorhood to me. Your Ben Gibbards offer more devotion, your Greg Dullis offer more sex. But Spoonleader Britt Daniel has been handsomely dressed, sighing and strumming over a good beat for 25 years plus, amassing a body of work that’s exceptionally consistent but too lively to be monotonous.

As for Daniel's personal life, all I know is that he got dumped by Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces before you even knew who she was. It’s a classic humblebrag I can’t blame him for putting in the press so often; it confirms his leading man viability while keeping his ego in check. With his casual confidence and timeless sensibilities, all fitted shirts and good grooves, he crosses Daryl Hall with Paul Rudd to get away with releasing a single named “My Babe” at 50, playing to fans who don't even know they made albums in the '90s.

I did, though! As a precocious teenage Matador Records junkie, I thought their 1996 debut Telephono got a bad rap. Sure, it sounded exactly like The Pixies, but better that than Frank Black’s The Cult Of Ray! People who bothered to listen to flop albums on Elektra in 1998 knew A Series Of Sneaks was something special, and by the time Merge co-signed 2000’s Loveways EP, Daniel had honed in on a sound that infused the classic rock verities with the rhythmic insistence of post-punk. They were the perfect band for an era of digital libraries where Wire and Billy Joel weren’t in opposition, but equally valid as long as they popped.

That still doesn’t explain how their tenth album in more than two decades doesn’t suck hog balls. The trick to their endurance is that, while the line-up has always been in a state of flux, Jim Eno has always been the drummer and both Daniel & Eno take engineering credits. These are committed scientists of room-sound and groove. Imagine if Keith Richards & Charlie Watts were the only guys on every Stones album, Mick having stuck with the London School Of Economics. Sure, the singles wouldn’t be quite so commercial. You might miss what the guy is rasping about half the time. But there'd be pocket for decades and no monologues about licking refugees.

This brief playlist is not meant to be definitive or some creme da le creme top ten. Think of it as the LP2 of the 2LP anthology they merit, meant to inspire your own LP1. Only one album appears twice (the underrated Transference), only one is ignored (the overrated Kill The Moonlight). For funsies, I end with one rarity, Yo La Tengo’s “Decora” morphed into a reverie of reverb. Just three songs here are also on their authorized best-of: “Everything Hits At Once,” the tense, sexy, vibraphone-graced 2001 album opener that your friend would never mistake for the Pixies. “Got Nuffin,” a post-therapy love song (“I got nothing to lose but darkness and shadows/ got nothing to lose but bitterness and patterns”) with a clang and pound worthy of Lou & Moe. “Do You,” the most crucial redundancy, is a gorgeous, bittersweet song about summer lovin’ from the perspective of someone who didn’t think they’d still be looking for it, but isn’t beating themsleves up about it. “You tiptoe for ages and lose yourself/ Flipping back pages, unbuckling belts/ Oh, love, that’s the way love comes.” Happy Valentine’s Day! May yours be as good as Britt's will probably be.